“Night Writing” from Teresita Fernández: Elemental
Teresita Fernández brings two decades of contemporary artwork to Phoenix Art Museum this month with her gorgeous showcase Teresita Fernández: Elemental. An accomplished artist with recent commissions in cities ranging from New Orleans to Naoshima, Japan, Fernández became the first Latina to serve on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts when she was appointed by President Obama in 2011. In collaboration with Pérez Art Museum Miami, the retrospective includes more than 50 large-scale sculptures, installations and mixed-media wall works. Fernández channels the natural world—meteor showers, fire and the night sky—into her works, which grapple with place, visibility and erasure, often working with materials like gold and graphite that have histories tied to colonialism, history, land and power. And you can take a bit of magic home with you with a fully illustrated, bilingual catalog featuring scholarly texts written by the exhibition curators and additional contributors. “Fernández’s belief that art can function as a form of wayfinding has allowed her to create subtle, resonant, deeply moving sculptural experiences,” says Aruna D’Souza, scholar of modern and contemporary European visual culture and feminist theory. March 21-July 26, admission $23, memberships $80-$1,800
Photography by: Phoenix Art Museum
